This recent news report perhaps provides one illuminating reason why Barclays Bank is so unwilling to take on public sector employees:

“The Financial Services Authority has hit Barclays with a record 7.7 million pound fine for mis-selling two income investment products to more than 12,000 clients who lost money during the financial crisis.” [January 2011]
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLNE70H03B20110118

Hmm.

If this is true it leads to a very worrying question. What is it that public-sector workers do that leaves them so unprepared for working in any other job?

Fortunately, although some public-sector workers are perhaps unemployable elsewhere (same as some private-sector workers) the vast majority are probably pretty adaptable and have skills to offer, so I suspect that many employers might change their mind.

I’d be interested to know how the 500 companies questioned were selected as well. No survey data I can see…

“many employers might change their mind.”

Hopefully over time, but what this demonstrates is that many public sector workers face having to accept lower wages or entry level jobs simply because employers don’t rate the experiences on their CVs.

As mentioned above, it would indeed be far more interesting to read WHY the people are unemployable, rather than to use the what amounts to just an unsubstantiated headline for political point scoring.

Surely it is more important to fix the problem that makes someone seemingly able to shuffle paper in a council office, also seem to be incapable of doing the same job in a privately rented office.

Is it a problem with the employees, or with the potential employers?

@4, you never have been near one of those “Council Offices”, have you?

Who is this “paper shuffling” of whom you speak? Read about it in a TPA handout? Daily Express?

Was the survey carried out via txt or have vowels fallen victim to the cuts?

Tim F,

Paper-shuffling is not necessarily a bad thing (I hope – I do it all day…). It is kind of necessary in most organisations. Ian’s point was hardly attacking public-sector workers, unless you’re going to be unreasonably touchy about things. All he suggested was that we need more information about whether the workers or the employers (or neither or both I presume…) were the problem (for what it’s worth, generally the employers in my view – hence my wondering who they were and how they were selected).

“WHY the people are unemployable”

First, you need to establish that people are unemployable. I put it to you that assuming people who work in the public sector are incapable of working in the private sector is just prejudice, which needs to be stamped out.

@ Planeshift

I think that’s why IanVisits is saying: we need to find out whether they’re unemployable because of problems with their training, work ethic or whatever, or simply because employers say so.

Although I strongly suspect any attempt to assign a single attribute, be it negative or positive, to every public sector worker in the land will swiftly reveal itself to be prejudiced bollocks.

@2: “What is it that public-sector workers do that leaves them so unprepared for working in any other job?”

The likely trouble with public sector workers may not be that they lack the skills to take on private sector jobs but that they tend to be more scrupulous about ripping off customers.

The fear of private sector bosses about taking on public sector workers is that they are more likely to be prone to whistleblowing or going off to employment tribunals to file claims about unfair treatment. The private sector boss who recruited a public sector employee who turned out to be a difficult employee could easily find his/her own career blighted thereafter so better to play it safe.

Chaise,

Although I strongly suspect any attempt to assign a single attribute, be it negative or positive, to every public sector worker in the land will swiftly reveal itself to be prejudiced bollocks.

In the classical sense of prejudiced (coming to a conclusion before the facts are presented) agreed.

Don’s final paragraph contains the reason why the perception has spread throughout the ‘dynamic, thrusting, enterpreneurial, wealth-creating’ private sector (and hence the public at large) that public-sector workers can all be dismissed as workshy incompetents doing ‘non-jobs’ for inflated salaries and – yes indeedy – ‘gold-plated’ pensions. If you throw enough sh!t around about ‘five-a-day lesbian diversity outreach officers, enough of it will stick irrrespective of whether it’s true or not.

I work in a department of the central Civil Service, and I can tell you that most of the problems we have are down to the ‘endless revolution’ ideology of administration which has been imported wholesale from the private sector along with its exorbitantly expensive ‘consultants’, whose job seems to be to sink the ship, but only having made sure that they’ve smashed up the lifeboats first.

Can we have a block on private sector ‘expertise’ coming into the public sector, please? Those people don’t have the ‘skillset’ (yuck!) to run a professional service, if what we see from the banks, public utilities, etc. are any guide.

@ 11 Watchman

“In the classical sense of prejudiced (coming to a conclusion before the facts are presented) agreed.”

I’d say in both senses of the word: it’s entirely possible that public sectors are more (or less) likely to have a poor attitude to work or non-transferable skills than private sector employees, but thinking that a judgment like that could apply to EVERY public worker is ridiculous. Law of probability applies here.

The article on the census is a reminder of one reason why private organisations don’t want former public sector employees. It quotes how much a council would lose if someone doesn’t fill in the form. Remember the shrill racist campaign the local authorities set up in an attempt to claim extra money for supposed immigrants?

These are people who operate on a very very low moral and ethical level. I wouldn’t want to work with them. I certainly wouldn’t give a job to one.

Are we really supposed to believe that the reason is that otherwise intelligent and skilled HR executives in the private sector accept the misinformation of press campaigns? I suspect the reasons are far more complex than that and will involve some degree of past experience by those doing the hiring.

@ 14 Chris

“These are people who operate on a very very low moral and ethical level. I wouldn’t want to work with them. I certainly wouldn’t give a job to one.”

Congratulations. You’ve just blindly condemned 6 million individuals based on two events that didn’t involve the vast majority of them.

57 per cent of companies are not interested in taking on former public sector workers

So 43% of companies are interested in taking on former public sector workers?

Without the further details as requested here, it is mere speculation what that FT/Barclays survey meant.

But it is probably representative of the default worldview of very many those who have never worked in the private sector or had direct family/friends work in it.

Statistics come out now and again of just how few people are dismissed for incompentence in public sector organisations.

Rubbing shoulders now and again with public sector workers, one hears sometimes about inept bosses that cannot be removed. Or inept colleagues or juniors.

Those of us who actually run private companies, especially if we have set them up ourselves, are acutely aware of the bottom line, the need to break-even every year, and the sheer impossibility of keeping on staff who just aren’t productive.

But having said that, there are mistaken world views the other way round too: the simplistic view of the City is that it is highly paid, highly productive people. But as I know from my own experience, it ain’t necessarily so: I hired (and fired) a software sales person, after they’d been out of work for a year after having worked for a small software team in a city bank.
The fit initially was good: small team (albeit part of a much bigger whole), selling high tech software – which is what we do.
But I immediately discovered the person was unable to use a computer – 1 finger typing, and she’d stall if a single click didn’t work… double clicking seemed beyond her.
She was inteligent and inarticulate – but in her city job must have been extremely unproductive – there also she had to do her own emails, meeting reports, power-points: no typing pools to delegate it to.

Her salary in that City job: £170K Phew.
We were paying less than a quarter, but let her go after 2 weeks because she was so painfully unproductive. She wasn’t worth a quarter of her city salary.

So also watch out when hiring private sector city types – they may not be worth the salary they have been receiving.

drat…Edit button needed…. that should have been:

>She was inteligent and articulate

@19 Just Visiting: “drat…Edit button needed…. that should have been:

>She was inteligent and articulate”

And “drat, again” on your part; I bet she could use a spelling checker. Entertaining series of correction and mis-correction happen to us all, so don’t take it personally.

I know a whole department in the civil service where it was decided the staff should all have NVQ’s in their relevant job. Some people where quick to complete it but others took twice as long to complete their course and even had others do their coursework for them.
Yes they were all now qualified but some were still totally unable to do their day to day job without help and they knew they were never at risk of losing their jobs. If you were that useless in the private sector then you would be rightfully out the door.

@12 The Judge: “I work in a department of the central Civil Service, and I can tell you that most of the problems we have are down to the ‘endless revolution’ ideology of administration which has been imported wholesale from the private sector along with its exorbitantly expensive ‘consultants’, whose job seems to be to sink the ship, but only having made sure that they’ve smashed up the lifeboats first.”

I sympathise as a fellow sufferer. Unfortunately, many of the management mechanisms (PRINCE2, ITIL) that are imposed by external consultants were designed by government agencies. Thus follies that have been deliberately and rationally ignored by internal management are delivered by externals as “best practice”.

If it were true that public sector managers were wedded to such managerialism, it would be fair to regard them as unemployable. But they aren’t wedded; they are just trying to run things according to constraints; with different constraints, they would do things differently.

For some managers, Blakey from On the Buses is a role model, but I meet Blakey in private companies as often as public service.

Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, David Blunkett and all the rest of the New Labour crowd moved effortlessly into the private sector. And let’s not forget Alan Milburn.

There is one exception, of course. Private companies will offer very cushy posts to public servants who help them win business with that part of the public sector, hence the revolving door between senior management in government and the board rooms of private corporations. Basically, if you lack the purchasing power or influence to scratch their backs, they won’t be scratching yours.

These statistics have no substance and are completely made up (by a bitter public sector worker who just lost his job no doubt).

Anyone can get a job in the private sector if they make themselves useful, either by way of hard work or way of making money.

Most of the Public Sector Civil Servants who got axed fall into the category of not knowing what hard work is (£100,000+35 days paid annual leave for 2-3 days work in a made up job springs to mind) or not knowing how to find a real demand for their service.

Well, i work in the private sector on low pay with low amount of annual leave. I represent a LARGE amount of the opinions of private sector workers.

You will get no sympathy from any of us for the following reasons –

– The private sector funds the public sector.
– The public sector has made up jobs where there is no REAL demand for their services
– The public sector enjoys a cushy lifestyle at the expense of the private sector
– Low working hours, high salaries, high annual leave

If you was actually any use in the public sector, then you will find NO PROBLEM AT ALL getting a job in the private sector.

Only the useless public sector workers that have no concept of hard work or how to make money from providing a REAL service will find it tough.

And quite simply put, tough luck. Your job wasn’t needed in the first place and you was happy to take high salaries at my expense. Tough luck in all honesty.

I personally have as much sympathy towards most civil servants as i would getting rid of a few leeches of my body that were happy to suck my blood. When i remove them from my body, i don’t wish bad upon them, but if they happen to die because they can’t suck my blood, then again, tough luck.

If you think my comments are harsh and you happen to have made a successful transition from public sector to private sector, don’t worry………..you will soon share the same view of your old public sector comrades.

@25. dsswoosh I totally agree with all that you say. I have worked in both (private and public sector) and in my opinion private sector employees are definitely more hardworking and they have better support from their employer.

@18. Just Visiting “Those of us who actually run private companies, especially if we have set them up ourselves, are acutely aware of the bottom line, the need to break-even every year, and the sheer impossibility of keeping on staff who just aren’t productive.”

I totally agree with this comment also but in respect of both unproductive and productive staff. Even though I’ve never owned my own company, I can see that this is the difference between private sector companies and managers in the public sector, and I’ve even tried explaining this to people. I think it’s the main reason why public sector can never be as efficient as the private sector, because public sector managers have not worked at the bottom. They normally just get a degree and then come in as whatever, so they don’t really know how a business is run and they don’t have empathy with bottom line employees. When I worked in solicitors’ firms the partners (who had all developed their own practices from scratch) always listened to their employees (no matter who they were) and tried, as far as they were able, to resolve the issue. The fact that they listened and did the best they could was enough to accept their decision even if it was not always what was expected. However, I’ve noticed whilst working in the public sector that the main focus seems to be “keeping to procedures” and bottom line staff especially do not get much support.

I’ve worked in both the private and public sectors and I’ve come to the conclusion that the private sector is driven by money whereas the public sector is driven by power. When there’s drive by money people know the harder they work the more money is generated and that’s good for everyone; this is achieved by being organised with each person taking their accountable seriously and incompetent workers being fired immediately to prevent any detrimental affect on the business and other workers. It was like a well oiled machine. However, public sectors are governed by the beauracractic model and are therefore driven by power. People are more concerned with who they can boss around and give orders to. In fact, it’s all about who’s above you and who’s below you – it quite obsessive. Accountability is not taken seriously because it’s very hard to fire public sector workers, so everyone then has to cope with working with incompetent workers. Believe me after working in the private sector for 30 years and then working in the public sector it was an extreme culture shock. I was not used to people regularly ignoring tasks which prevented me from doing my job, and ordering about anybody and everybody they can – it’s extremely chaotic and disorganised. Having said that their dealings with the public would be fine. Also, because of the power struggles there’s quite a lot of bulling and stress. I never suffered any stress when I worked in the private sector and I did 4 times more work than I do now in the public sector – it’s frustrating at times because of contrast in how efficiently I worked in the private sector.